Cordelia Cuts Class
by Dan Sickles
Summary: Spoiled, obnoxious Cordelia cuts class and unearths big trouble for Sunnydale! Will Cordy ever learn to care about others? Will Buffy save her in time? This story is set in Season One, prior to the events in Prophecy Girl. Rated T for safety.
1. Cutting Class

CORDELIA CUTS CLASS

_This will be a continuing story. Please comment nicely!_

"I am so not up for school today," announced dark-eyed Cordelia Chase, covering a huge yawn with long and perfectly manicured fingernails. The beautiful seventeen year-old was hanging with her friends Harmony and Courtney in the back row of the computer lab at Sunnydale High School, watching the losers do all the work.

"We should hit the beach," Harmony replied. "Or the mall." Always a copycat, the dimwit blonde faked a yawn just to look as beautiful and bored as fabulous Cordelia. As if!

"Yeah, well, shopping costs money." Cordelia frowned at the memory of her father screaming at her mother the night before. Dad said they were going broke. Cordelia was afraid of being poor, but she didn't do fear in public. She did anger.

And Willow Rosenberg was her favorite target.

"Hey, ugly face," Cordelia taunted. "Are you looking up how to be a loser on the internet?"

"Who, me?" Willow's dazed response only made the popular girls laugh harder.

"No, not you," the stunning dark-eyed beauty jeered. "I was talking to all the other flat-chested redheads with freckles!"

"I can't help how I look," Willow whimpered, close to tears.

"Well, there are spa treatments that remove freckles," Cordelia growled, stamping out just the tiniest feeling of guilt. "Why don't you look up a decent day spa on the internet? You know, one that's local, and not too expensive."

Willow was either stupid or desperate, because she actually did a search and came up with something. "Hey, Cordelia! It says here that Eternal Rest Spa just opened out on Route 155. All this week there's a complete massage/facial package for $49.95. But no freckle removal," Willow sighed.

"We should go, Cor," Harmony said excitedly. "We should totally cut class and go.

"Please," Cordelia waved her hand in scorn. "As if I would be caught dead at some local day spa." The other two girls looked disappointed, but Cordelia knew what she was doing. She couldn't _admit_ to looking for bargains. Not ever!

Going it alone was different. Zooming down 155 with the top down. The sun kissing her perfectly tanned legs. The wind running playful fingers through her long, black hair. Cordelia Chase was a girl who had everything, and she knew it.

Why couldn't her life just stay this way forever?

It was a little spooky, how quiet and green everything was out here. Cordelia saw nothing but a lush emerald lawn that went on and on forever, and a shady little cottage near by. This place was familiar, somehow. It almost looked like . . .

"Oh, very funny, Willow. Ha ha ha, you freak!" Sending her to a cemetery was somebody's idea of a really funny joke. Well, somebody was going to pay!

"Can I help you, my dear?" A woman's soft voice came from the shadows nearby. She didn't look like a ghoul or anything. She looked like a rich old duchess in a Jane Austen movie. She kept out of the sun, but she wore a classy tweed suit and pricy pearls. Very little makeup, light on the perfume.

"I think I'm in the wrong place," Cordelia told her, with a nervous laugh. "I'm just the _victim_ of stupid teenage prank. Someone told me this place was really a spa!"

The silver-haired duchess opened her blue eyes a mile wide. "But this is a spa! My name is Edwina Covington, and I just opened a small day spa here by the cemetery. It was the cheapest location available! Won't you please come in?"

"Oh, sure. I mean, I'd be delighted, Miss Covington." The old woman had turned the basement of her little cottage into a spa. How pathetic was that? There was a sauna, and a massage table, and a space for waxing and manicures and all the rest. It all looked fabulous. But the place was so tiny!

Just to make things even more ridiculous, the one person working for poor Edwina was a big fat Swedish woman the size of King Kong!

"Inga has been with me for many years," Miss Covington explained, as a skeptical Cordelia stretched out on the long, low massage table. "She has wonderful hands, but one woman can only do so much. Surely you know of other young girls who might enjoy working for us?"

"Well, I don't think anyone I know would want to come all the way out here, to a creepy place like this! Sunnydale's got enough problems with vampires . . . oh, that feels good." Cordelia stopped complaining as the big Swedish woman's strong, powerful hands began hammering away at her back.

"Vampires?" Miss Edwina Covington repeated. "But vampires aren't real, my dear." Her face changed, going all gnarled and hideous in the wink of an eye. So did Inga's.

"Well, they are so real," Cordelia insisted. But her eyes were closed, and the massage was making her feel marvelous. She didn't even notice when the fangs bit into her neck.

_**TO BE CONTINUED . . . **_


	2. Fang Marks

_Chapter Two: Fang Marks_

_Buffy in a bathtub, slitting her wrists,_

_Master got her soul and she can't resist._

_Angel stole her stake, now she's just a whore,_

_Now she's not the Slayer anymore._

"That is the most beautiful, inspiring poem I've ever heard," Cordelia gasped, gazing up at Edwina Covington in pure admiration. "It's so catchy, too. Like a jump-rope song!"

"I know I can count on you, my dear," the silver-haired Englishwoman said, patting Cordelia on her bare shoulder. "Just make sure the prophecy gets all around school."

"Sure, I can do that. No problemo!" The spoiled beauty lay back down on the table, sighing deeply as Edwina's jumbo-sized assistant Inga resumed her daily massage. Hitting the spa after school did a girl's complexion a world of good. Cordelia had managed to stop off every day this week.

The only problem was, Cordelia didn't really have the money for a full spa treatment every day. Not even at a tiny little day spa like Eternal Rest. So she was really pretty grateful that a classy old lady like Edwina was willing to old off on charging her – as long as she did her a few favors here and there.

Not that Queen C. (her license plate, and also her not-so-secret nickname for herself) had any intention of dirtying her own hands or ruining her own nails with spray paint or magic markers, or whatever the school losers used to write graffiti on the bathroom walls. No, there were better ways to get the job done.

"Hey! Hey you!" Cordelia didn't remember the loser's name. She wouldn't have used it anyway, so no big whoop there. But it was funny how lately she got these little blank spells where she couldn't remember stuff. Probably it was just all the relaxation time at the spa. And really, it was probably good for her not to be so stressed about stupid little details.

"Uh . . . hey. Hi, Cordy."

Cordelia's dark eyes flashed like lightning before a storm. "Who gave you permission to use my name, freak?"

"Uh . . . nobody?" Alone in the hallway, the loser squirmed like he was two seconds away from wetting his pants. He acted like it was years since anybody even called his name. All that misery and fear and all Cordelia felt was disgust.

But she smiled.

"Lucky for you I'm in a good mood today. What was your name again?"

"Jonathan."

"Right, Jonathan. Well, I'm playing a little joke on my good friend Buffy Summers, and I need you to write this poem on the wall in every boy's room in school. Now obviously I can't check your work. But I know you won't let me down."

Cordelia unleashed that smile again, letting it take full effect.

"But I . . . you . . . she . . . they . . ."

"Enough with the pronouns, loser boy!" Cordelia snapped, totally unaware that Jonathan was freaking out not about her but about something going on behind her.

Until a hand landed on her shoulder. It was a girl's hand, small and almost delicate-looking. But with a grip like steel.

"Hello, Cordelia," said Buffy Summers.

"Buffy! Hey!" Cordelia's smile would have cut any horny football player down to size instantly, but it bounced right off the pretty little blonde. Buffy scared Cordelia. It was the quiet strength and leadership under all that perky personality. "Jonathan and I were just . . . we were talking, and . . ."

"And look what Jonathan dropped on the floor." Like a vulture, Xander Harris swooped down on the piece of paper. He passed it to Willow Rosenberg.

Who passed it to Buffy.

"Do you want to explain this, Cordelia?" Buffy asked, in that soft, deadly voice. Her blue eyes were like probing lasers.

Cordelia went for a bright, happy tone. "You know, I'd love to! I can't remember who gave me this poem, but the moment I read it I thought it was totally inappropriate. In fact I was just asking Jonathan where I could find you guys!"

"So you can't remember who gave you this?" Buffy asked, holding the poem carefully in her left hand. Her eyes never left the other girl's face.

Cordelia shook her head, hoop earrings wiggling like crazy. "No! No, I can't! Isn't that funny, how I can't remember . . ."

"Maybe it was the same person who gave you this." Buffy used her right hand to pull the sexy blue Hermes scarf from around Cordelia's neck.

"Those look like fang marks," Xander Harris said helpfully.


	3. Green Mist

_Chapter Three: Green Mist_

"All right, Cordelia, let's hear it." Buffy cracked her knuckles. The cute blonde looked casual but tough, like a movie cop giving a criminal the third degree. The sexy, sun-bronzed beauty in the hot seat started spilling her guts at once.

"Well, I went to the spa to relax, and Inga gave me a massage, just like she always does. I guess I fell asleep!" Cordelia looked around the school library in a panic, wishing she could get back to Eternal Rest Spa. She felt safe there. It was dark and cool. Lately the light bothered her. "Anyway, next thing I know I'm standing in the hallway, telling Jonathan to spray paint that horrible poem all over school. That's when you guys found me. And that's all I know!"

"Maybe what made her fall asleep was the whole, you know, blood-letting thing," Willow Rosenberg suggested in a whisper. The red-head turned to Cordelia with big sad eyes. "I was the one who sent you there, Cordelia. It's all my fault if you've become unholy and evil."

"Unholy and evil-_er,_" Xander Harris corrected. "Can I watch while you stake her, Buff? I've always wanted to see Cordelia get stuck with something hard and pointy."

"At least Buffy has a bigger stake than you do," Cordelia told him sweetly.

"Children, children, let's not stray from the point." Giles the librarian took off his glasses, frowning thoughtfully. "The mystery here is not how Cordelia was ensnared, but why the vampires let her live long enough to escape. Why would they allow a victim to alert the Slayer to their presence?"

"Simple," Buffy said, twirling her stake. "They want to die."

Buffy felt strong and confident as she slithered along the dark drainage tunnel that ran below the cemetery. Cordelia had gone all weepy when she started packing her weapons bag. From the way Cordy talked, Edwina and Inga were like her fairy godmothers. Even Giles had mumbled something about waiting until his historical research on the vampires was complete. Supposedly he recognized Edwina's name from some English witch trial way back. As if she cared! Buffy wasn't into history, but she could do the math.

Two vampires. One Slayer. The odds were way in her favor.

Suddenly the lithe, athletic blonde found herself falling into a large, white-tiled chamber. The cool air felt good, and she landed on her feet in a fighting stance. Hello, Eternal Rest.

"You come for massage?" Weird, how vampires could glide into a room silently. Even one that was as fat as an elephant. Buffy felt a little freaked out by the sheer size of the woman. And it was funny how her round, open face looked so . . . friendly. But they all changed when the fighting started.

"Honey, you need to go on a diet. Maybe try some of that new low-cal blood?"

Buffy launched her first kick with incredible speed, following it up with a stake-thrust straight to the heart. The fat woman in the starchy dress moved slower than any vampire she'd ever faced. But when she tried to bury her stake in Inga's heart, Buffy found that all that blubber got in the way. Her stake hit soft flesh and sank right in, but nothing happened.

It was like fighting the Goodyear blimp.

"Dot's not right," Inga scolded. "We no fight you. We help you." Her hurt tone of voice really clashed with her fangs.

"Yeah, right!" Buffy usually made better comebacks, but at this point she was panting so she had to keep it short. Weird how fighting such a slow-moving vamp was wearing her out so quickly. This time she spun in from the opposite side with a high kick, but the fat woman just let it slide over her head. Her flabby arms blocked all of Buffy's punches, which were getting weaker now. And then she moved forward, her fat body closing off all the escape routes, sucking up all the air.

"Stay back," Buffy gasped, feeling panic skitter down her spine. She'd never felt so weak in the knees. Maybe it had something to do with the green mist slowly filling the chamber. She needed to get out of here, and fast. But she felt so tired, amazingly exhausted. Inga caught her when she fell, and as she went beddy-bye in the arms of a vampire Buffy heard her favorite stake fall and clatter across the floor.


	4. Something In Common

_Chapter Four: Something In Common_

"Oh, yeah." Buffy's frown melted into dreamy contentment. "Oh, yeah! Oh, that feels good. More, please!"

"This feels better than fighting, ja?" Inga's thick fingers sank deep into the Slayer's back, making her aches and pains fade faster than a dusted vampire. Funny how the fight with Inga had made her so sore. All she remembered was throwing a lot of punches and kicks. None of them landed, but she sure wore herself out. Maybe she pulled something too. Either way, it was surprising to wake up and find herself getting the royal treatment from a blimp-sized bloodsucker.

There had to be a catch, of course. There always was in this kind of deal. Maybe it had something to do with the other vampire – the classy old English dame Cordelia had been babbling about at school.

"Ah, there you are." Right on cue, the silver-haired lady vamp strolled into the room wearing a timeless Chanel suit. Her face was all high cheekbones and smiling blue eyes. Her perfume was all flowery and elegant. "Feeling better?"

"A little better." Buffy clamped down on her face muscles. The lady vamp had one of those rare smiles that actually made your whole face ache to smile back. But Buffy didn't trust her . . . yet. So she made her face into a no-smile zone.

"I brought you something to wear," the elegant older woman said softly, an apologetic lilt to her voice. "I thought perhaps we could talk. Inga makes the most wonderful herbal tea."

"I never drink . . . tea." Buffy slipped into an embroidered black silk kimono that made her feel _insanely_ elegant. And sexy. No wonder Cordelia was crazy about this woman!

"You never drink tea?" The fancy lady sat down on a chair facing the massage table, a worried look on her face. "I can ask Inga to serve some juice, or mineral water, or . . ."

"It was a joke," Buffy said, annoyed. "You know, like Bela Lugosi in Dracula? 'I never drink wine.'"

"Oh, dear. I remember when that awful movie first came out. But I never was very fond of horror films. Dark Journey with Vivien Leigh, now that was a lovely film. So romantic! I saw it at the Odeon in Piccadilly Circus in 1937."

Buffy had to smile. "You're really not like most of the vampires I deal with. What's your name, anyway?"

"Edwina Covington."

"Buffy Summers."

The two women shook hands, and the next thing Buffy knew the herbal tea had arrived, served in tiny china cups. Inga's huge, hulking form looked pretty funny pushing a tea tray.

"So, I'm guessing that you've got a favor you'd like to ask of me, seeing as how your servant didn't kill me when she had the chance." Buffy sipped her tea, which was hot and full of flavor but at the same time rich and like mega-soothing.

Edwina nodded, her face going serious. "You know that there is an ancient, truly evil vampire living in Sunnydale."

"Yeah." Buffy shuddered. "He's called the Master. He's the creep who's supposed to kill me. Only I'm not into dying."

"Indeed." Edwina set down her teacup. "I've died at his hands myself, dear. So it seems you and I have something in common."


	5. A New Woman

_Chapter Five: A New Woman_

"Yes, well I believe the vampire Buffy has encountered was once an evil witch." Rupert Giles put on his spectacles, and read aloud from the ancient leather-bound volume on supernatural lore. "_In the year 1627, the village of Clapton in Staffordshire suffered a series of mysterious deaths. Because the victims were children, the villagers naturally assumed the culprit was a local midwife and herbal healer known as Mother Covington. With the help of one Dr. Isaac, a Puritan minister and noted scholar, the people of Clapton were able to trap the elderly woman in her cottage and burn it to the ground. The killings stopped soon after, thus proving to all concerned that Mother Covington was the murderer._"

"That's great – except it all happened in exactly the opposite way." Heads turned as slim, golden-haired Buffy Summers marched into the school library, her brown eyes blazing.

"Buffy!" Xander Harris looked absolutely overjoyed to see the Slayer again. But then his good-natured face turned puzzled. "We thought you were trapped in the crypt. We were coming to rescue you . . ."

Bored and beautiful Cordelia waved her manicured hand. "Please. We were so not coming to your rescue . . ."

Xander ignored the interruption. "We were totally coming. But you're still alive, so does that mean the evil lady vampire who runs the health spa outside of town has been dusted?"

"She's totally not evil, Xander, and no, she has not been dusted. We talked, that's all." The beautiful blonde Slayer gave a casual shrug, as though she had merely forgotten her geometry homework. "Edwina Covington is mega-cool."

"I know, right?" Cordelia's dazzling dark-brown eyes lit up with a rare smile. "My skin, hair and nails were already perfect, but Edwina has taken perfect to the next level."

"Why are you wearing a scarf around your neck, Buffy?" Willow Rosenberg's soft voice interrupted Cordelia's glowing tribute to Edwina's amazing beauty treatments.

"What, this?" Buffy waved her hand, lazily imitating Cordelia. "I think Edwina took some blood to prepare a protection spell, for when I go up against the Master."

"You think?" Giles the librarian looked as though he were about to have a stroke. "You _think_ a vampire bit you on the neck? You _think_ she drank your blood? Well that's – I mean to say – it's your job to be _certain_ about these things, Buffy."

"Yeah, and what's all this about you going up against the Master?" Xander's cheerful, laughing features clouded over. His dark eyes looked worried. "What about the whole, 'he's going to kill the Slayer because it is written' thing?"

"Edwina's going to help me," Buffy chirped, with breezy confidence. "We talked the whole thing over, and she told me what really happened in 1627. See, she was really a good witch. The Master just framed her for killing all those children. He disguised himself as a Puritan minister, and got the locals all stirred up against her. Then when she was dying, he turned her into a vampire. The guy's a total creep!"

"And Edwina . . . that is, Mother Covington . . . she told you all this?" As a proper Englishman, Giles was clearly reeling at these stunning revelations about his country's sordid past. "I'm sorry, Buffy, but the entire account . . . well, it simply strains one's credulity. A vampire wearing Puritan garb!"

"People always do horrible things in the name of God," Cordelia commented. "Why can't vampires?" Seeing how Xander and Willow were staring at her, she shrugged. "What, I'm not allowed to have an insight now and then?"

"Edwina Covington is a vampire," Xander said slowly. "She drinks blood. She drank your blood, and she probably drank Buffy's blood. Am I the only one who has a problem with that?"

"Xander, you so don't get what Edwina is all about." Buffy stretched in her chair, looking very satisfied and content. "When I went down into her lair, I was all like, Slayery and stuff. But after we talked, and I had this amazing tea, and she took a drop or two of my blood, I felt like . . . like . . ."

"Like a new woman," Cordelia finished for her.

"Yeah," Buffy agreed. "Exactly. And when I face the Master, he won't even know what hit him."


	6. Nothing But Silence

_Chapter Six: Nothing but Silence_

All three of them came at her at once, lunging from the shadows. There was a greasy long-hair in a denim jacket, a muscle-bound, swarthy little guy with gold chains and gelled hair, and a fair-haired preppie in a pastel sweater.

Three vampires. Three losers. Three disgusting male specimens Buffy Summers was happy to dust on the spot.

"Sorry, no Metallica shows in Sunnydale." _Poof!_

"Are you trying to _bite_ me, Guido? Fugeddaboudit!" _Poof!_

"See you at the Country Club dance, Lance!" _Poof!_

And then suddenly her wrist was caught in an iron grip. Suddenly Buffy's stake was wrenched right out of her grasp, and she was staring deep into Irish eyes that never smiled.

"Don't do it, Buffy."

"Don't do what?" Pouting in a way that sent a message no other man could resist, Buffy sent a hot, angry look at the sexy vampire. "I'm trying to do my job, Angel. Either help me, or get out of my way, or get ready to die."

"Sorry, I'm already dead." Angel didn't smile. He just stepped back a little, already half-fading into the darkness.

"Hey, give me back my stake!" Buffy was getting seriously annoyed. Her pout had been more of a come-kiss-me pout than she wanted to admit. Yet Angel hadn't taken the hint. Was he stupid or what?

"Not if you're going to use it to take on the Master. I know what's foretold, Buffy. If you go up against him, you die."

"If I go up against him _alone_, I die. But I have friends, Angel." Buffy gave him a look. Still angry. Still frustrated. "Not that I expect _you_ to grasp the concept."

"I grasp the concept. I just don't get involved with humans. Any vampire who does is looking to feed."

"Are you talking about Edwina? If you are, you're full of it. That lady is super cool! And the two of us are going to give the Master a real surprise. We have a plan . . ."

"I know her plan," Angel interrupted rudely. "I've seen it before. She gets you to trust her, she makes you feel like a goddess, she gives you potions that melt your resistance. Then she wraps you up and gives you to the Master as a present. Just in time for his Ascension."

Buffy forgot about her frustrated feelings for Angel. She flashed a warrior's daredevil grin. "Yeah, that's the plan. Only when I get up close we change the ending. _And_ the Prophecy."

"Not with this, you don't."

"Give me back my stake, Angel."

Buffy made the first move. And she was close to winning the fight when suddenly it turned into something entirely different. The two of them were kissing like there was no tomorrow. Until he broke away. "Don't trust her, Buffy," whispered a voice in the dark. A voice that faded faster than the buzz from that amazing kiss.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me!" The hot little blonde looked down at her empty hands, realizing she'd just been played, big time. This was what the world's most fabulous kiss was all about. Getting a piece of wood away from her.

"I have other stakes, Angel," Buffy called out. Of course he was gone. But he could still hear her. She knew he could.

"I HAVE OTHER STAKES!"

Nothing but silence.


End file.
